Shoot the Works

by Brett Halliday

  “If you’ll answer some questions truthfully we may find out. Was Wallace planning a trip?”

  “No. Not to my knowledge. He was looking forward to Myra’s return tomorrow. Why do you ask that, Mr. Shayne?”

  “His apartment looks as though he was packing for a long trip when a bullet between the eyes interrupted him.”

  “I can’t believe it.” Martin closed his eyes again and squeezed his heavy jowl with one hand. “You must be mistaken,” he said flatly. “We had a very important conference for tomorrow morning. Jim had set it up himself.”

  Shayne said just as flatly, “On the other hand, there is definite proof that he planned to be a long way from Miami tomorrow. Think back,” he urged strongly. “Wasn’t there any indication of this when you saw him this afternoon? What sort of mood was he in? Nervous or excited?”

  “Jim? He was never nervous or excited. Steady as the rock of Gibraltar. Now you take Tommy.…”

  “Do you mean Tompkins?’” Shayne interrupted, glancing at his watch.

  “Yes. Now Tommy is different. Volatile, you know, and.…”

  “I’d like to talk to him,” Shayne interrupted. “Where will I find him?”

  “At the hotel. The Weymore. We have our offices there and he has a suite.”

  Very faintly, from beyond the closed bedroom door Shayne heard the unmistakable ring of a doorbell.

  He said swiftly, “That will probably be the police now. Is there a back way out?”

  “Why, yes. Through the kitchen which is directly ahead when you go out that door.” Martin’s florid face expressed quizzical disapproval. “But why are you ducking the police?”

  “Just to keep one step ahead of them, if I can.” Shayne backed toward the door. “Tell them I’ve been here … but was in too much of a hurry to wait and greet them. I’ll be in touch with you.”

  He opened the door and slid out, heard Mrs. Martin’s voice from the front door, “… a detective is with him right now. If you’ll come this way.…”

  Shayne went swiftly down a narrow passage to an open door leading into the kitchen. He closed the door behind him and felt around in the semi-darkness until he found a locked door leading out the rear. He stepped out into the night and circled the rear of the house and into the adjoining yard and thence to the sidewalk. A radio car was parked in front of his car and the other car that had been in front of Martin’s house prior to Shayne’s arrival.

  Shayne walked past it briskly, noting that it was empty, slid under the steering wheel of his own car and pulled away smoothly. He drove to 79th and Miami Avenue, and south on the avenue to 4th, where he turned left to the Weymore Hotel, an unpretentious residential hotel near the Boulevard.

  He parked in front and went in the large, old-fashioned lobby and stopped at the desk to ask a bored night clerk the number of Mr. Tompkins’ room.

  The clerk had a very thin, fawn-colored mustache and he lifted it in the suggestion of a sneer as he shook his head and appeared happy to say, “I’m afraid Mr. Tompkins is not in just now.”

  Shayne said, “Ring him and see.”

  The clerk continued to shake his head with an oddly patronizing air. “Mr. Tompkins had a call which he did not answer less than five minutes ago.”

  “Any idea when he will be back?”

  “I’m sure I couldn’t say.” The clerk yawned delicately to indicate that he simply didn’t give a damn either.

  Shayne got back in his car and drove up the Boulevard to 40th Street again. He turned off and pulled in to the curb in front of the Wallace’s apartment building behind a radio car and two other police sedans, one of which he recognized by the license plates as Chief Gentry’s personal car.

  A uniformed cop stood inside the small foyer in front of the inner doors that stood ajar as Shayne walked in. He was methodically chewing a wad of gum and he regarded the detective with a jaundiced eye and remained stolidly in front of the open doors.

  “You live here?”

  Shayne shoved his hat back on his red hair and said, “A friend of mine does. Jim Wallace on the fourth floor.”

  “Friend of Wallace’s, huh?” The cop made it sound like at least a felony. “Pretty late to be visiting.”

  Shayne said, “I always visit my dead friends on the stroke of midnight. Call upstairs if you want and tell Will Gentry I’m here. Mike Shayne.”

  “You’re Mike Shayne, huh? Heard a lot about you.” The patrolman continued to chew his gum ruminatively but made no move to withdraw from his strategic position in front of the entrance.

  Shayne made a disgusted noise deep in his throat and turned to search for the button on the wall with Wallace’s name beneath it. The cop said good-naturedly, “No need to ring if you wanta go up. Chief said it was okay.”

  Shayne turned and asked, “Why didn’t you say so?”

  The man grinned amiably and said, “You didn’t ask.” He stepped aside and Shayne went in. Both elevators were above, and Shayne rang one of them down. He got in and went up to 4, and saw another policeman lounging in the hall outside of the open door to the Wallace apartment.

  He recognized Shayne as the redhead approached him and motioned inside with his thumb. “Hi, Mr. Shayne. Chief said it was okay.”

  Shayne went past him and stopped in the archway. Lucy and Mrs. Wallace sat side by side on the sofa as they had been when he left. Beyond them, Timothy Rourke lounged in a deep chair with one thin leg cocked up over the arm of it, his deep-set eyes quizzically bright in a face that was thin to the point of emaciation. Shayne glanced from the Daily News reporter to the other figure in the room.

  Police Chief Will Gentry stood flat-footed in the center of the rug, facing the two women on the sofa. His ruddy face was impassive and he was rumbling, “… just as soon as I get a couple of things straight, Mrs. Wallace. I want you to think back to New York this morning when the airline notified you that they had a vacancy to Miami. I want you to tell me.…”

  He broke off as he noted the eyes of both women turned to look at Shayne. He turned his head slowly, rolling a cigar between his lips with manifest satisfaction.

  “Little late getting here, aren’t you, Mike?”

  Shayne shrugged. “Could that be a crack?”

  “Not at all. Merely an observation, Mike.” Chief Gentry’s voice was sardonic. “It’s just a welcome relief to answer one homicide call in Miami and not find you sitting on the case when I get here.”

  Shayne tugged at his left ear-lobe and said mildly, “I made it as fast as I could after Lucy phoned me.”

  “So now you’re here, and now you can sit yourself down and keep quiet while I conduct an investigation for once in my life without wondering how many important clues you’re holding out on me.” He turned back to Mrs. Wallace and cleared his throat. “Now, Ma’am. This morning in New York. I was asking you.…”

  The telephone rang in the bedroom. He paused, and in the silence they could hear a man answering it in the other room. A few moments later a member of the Homicide Squad appeared in the doorway and his face became blank as he saw Shayne. He spoke stiffly to Gentry:

  “Sergeant Harkson reporting from the Martin residence, sir. He thought you’d want to know that Mike Shayne got there ahead of him to question Martin and ran out the back door when Harkson went in the front. Mr. Martin refuses to divulge the questions he was asked by Shayne.”

  Gentry said, “Thanks. Get on with it, Morris.” He sighed and glanced at Shayne, who was seating himself negligently in a chair near the archway. “We’ll have a talk afterward, Mike. The only reason you’re staying is because Mrs. Wallace has stated that you have been retained by her. That doesn’t give you any special privileges, and if I learn, by God, that you’ve been running around instructing witnesses it won’t keep you out of jail.”

  He turned back to the widow. “Now, Ma’am.…”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Shayne grinned across at Timothy Rourke, and the reporter closed one eyelid in a slow wink. Shayne
lit a cigarette and listened inattentively while Mrs. Wallace told Gentry in detail about unexpectedly picking up an afternoon airplane reservation and cancelling her upper berth which would have put her in Miami at noon the next day.

  “And you didn’t notify your husband of your changed plans?” Gentry commented sourly.

  “I tried to catch him at the office after lunch. He wasn’t in, and I’d made it a person-to-person call, so I let it go until I arrived. You see, Inspector, I had absolutely no reason in the world to feel it was important or would particularly change Jim’s plans one way or the other.”

  “Yet when you did arrive you claim you refrained from coming directly home for fear of surprising him … embarrassing him?”

  “I’ve explained that,” Mrs. Wallace said steadily. “It was a foolish pact we made a long time ago. When we were both much younger and less sure of the sanctity of our marriage vows.”

  “And you expect me to believe that while you had absolutely no suspicion at all of your husband, nevertheless, after a long and tiring train trip, you stopped off at a restaurant to eat a dinner you didn’t want just because he wasn’t home to answer the phone?” Will Gentry bore down hard on the sarcastic tone of the question, and color appeared in the widow’s cheeks and she wet her lips nervously.

  Before she could reply, Shayne interposed, “She hasn’t said she expects you to believe anything, Will. She answered your question.”

  “Keep out of this, Mike.”

  “Not if you’re going to grill her that way. If she’s a suspect, take her down and book her and let her have a lawyer. You don’t have to answer any more questions, Mrs. Wallace.”

  “I don’t really mind,” she faltered. “I want to do everything I can to help the police.”

  “I think you’ve done all you can for the moment,” Shayne said shortly. “There’ll be time enough for this sort of interrogation later,” he added impatiently to Gentry. “You can see Mrs. Wallace has had a severe shock and needs rest. Why don’t you take her to your place for the night, Lucy?”

  “I’ve already phoned Bob Pearce and he’s on his way over,” Lucy told him. “She felt she should be with Helen tonight.”

  “I explained that you’re here on sufferance, Mike,” Gentry said angrily. “Remember, you don’t know all the facts. Like, for instance, that it looks as though Mr. Wallace was in the act of packing for a long trip when he was killed. Or did Lucy tell you that over the phone?”

  Shayne shrugged. “Is it significant?”

  “I think it is. Here was a man expecting his wife home at noon tomorrow … evidently preparing to skip out before she got here. How does that square with the picture she is trying to give us of a devoted husband … a perfect marital relationship?”

  There was a bustle at the outer door, and a heavy-bodied, blond young man pushed past the guard and hurried belligerently into the room and toward Mrs. Wallace, exclaiming, “Mother! Oh God, Mother.”

  Tears streamed down her cheeks as she rose with outstretched arms. He held her tightly, patting her shoulder and comforting her with the awkward words that men use under such circumstances, and Lucy got up and moved over to Shayne with her own eyes glinting wetly.

  “Do you think I should go home with her, Michael? I think Helen might like it and I hate to think of them alone together.”

  Shayne nodded and took her arm to draw her over to Gentry. He said wearily, “Let’s not get at cross purposes, Will. Let Lucy and her son-in-law take her home for the night. She’ll keep.”

  “Just don’t get in my hair, Mike,” Gentry said gruffly. “You get anything out of Martin?”

  “Nothing. He saw Wallace at the office this afternoon, and says they had an important business conference slated for tomorrow morning. That seems to rule out any plans for a trip.”

  “You can’t rule it out,” Gentry argued, rolling his cigar from one corner of his mouth to the other. He sighed and spoke to Pearce. “All right. Take your mother-in-law home and let Miss Hamilton go along if she wishes. If she wants to pack anything, I’ll have a man.…”

  “That won’t be necessary.” Mrs. Wallace drew away from Pearce, drying her eyes with a damp handkerchief. “I have my bag still packed just as I brought it from the plane.”

  “Oh, yes.” Gentry frowned at a closed bag on the floor. “You mind opening it for us to have a look before you take it away?”

  “Why should she?” demanded Pearce angrily.

  “We didn’t find any gun here in the apartment,” Will Gentry told him.

  “What’s that got to do with a bag she brought from New York?”

  Gentry sighed and addressed the widow directly, “Do you mind opening your bag for Miss Hamilton to check it, Ma’am?”

  She said, “No. I don’t mind. Because there isn’t any gun concealed inside, I can assure you.”

  She knelt beside the bag and unfastened the snaps. Lucy helped her open it and take out some of the things. Lucy checked through it carefully and informed Gentry with biting sarcasm, “No gun or other incriminating evidence, Chief. Now, may Bob and I take Mrs. Wallace to her daughter?”

  Gentry nodded stolidly, and stepped back to the door into the bedroom and conferred briefly with one of the men while Lucy helped Mrs. Wallace close her bag. When the three of them went out, Gentry walked back with a tall man in plain clothes beside him. “You know the Pearce address, Mike?”

  “It’s on the Beach.” Shayne gave it to him. “Don’t you trust Lucy to keep track of her, Will?”

  Will Gentry sighed and said, “Lucy works for you, Mike.” He nodded to the plainclothes detective who went out. “I know you’re both pulling for Mrs. Wallace,” he went on mildly, “but you know as well as I do that nine times out of ten when a hubby gets gunned it’s because he’s been playing around and wifey catches on.” He took the cigar out of his mouth and looked distastefully at the chewed and saliva-soaked end, and then replaced it between his lips with a sigh. “She did come back unexpectedly and catch him in the act of packing for a trip she knew nothing about. How does it add up to you?”

  Shayne shrugged impassively, conscious of the damning airplane tickets in his pocket. “Maybe he was getting ready for a trip he planned to take tomorrow afternoon.”

  “Maybe,” said Gentry briefly, “though I never knew a man to start packing a bag the night before.”

  Timothy Rourke yawned and got up from his chair, replacing a wad of copy paper in his sagging coat pocket. “Have the boys turned up anything here in the apartment?”

  “Nothing that helps,” Gentry grunted sourly. “Someone stood in the bedroom doorway and let Wallace have it between the eyes. With a thirty-two, most likely. We’ll have a P.M. and a bullet for comparison if we find a gun to match it up with.”

  The police doctor and two other men came out of the bedroom as he spoke. Rourke intercepted them to ask the time of death.

  “Around ten o’clock, give or take. He died instantly.” The doctor shrugged and went to the door. “I may be able to give it to you closer after the P.M.”

  “How well did you know the Wallaces,” Gentry demanded of Shayne after instructing his men to take the body out.

  “Lucy knew her quite well … through their daughter,” Shayne evaded a direct answer.

  “What sticks in my craw,” said Gentry stolidly, “is why she telephoned Lucy instead of the police. Did Lucy explain that when she phoned you?”

  Shayne shook his head. “Stands to reason though,” he said equably. “She finds her husband dead, and her first thought is to get the guy that did it. So her second thought is, naturally.…”

  “Mike Shayne,” put in Timothy Rourke happily. “Natch. Who else would you think of in Miami when you want a murder case solved?”

  Will Gentry gave a disgusted snort. “So she wasted all that time waiting for Lucy to get here. Sitting here quietly with her beloved husband’s dead body getting cold in the other room. Nuts! She called Lucy first for some specific reason. And I expect L
ucy to tell us what it was, Mike.”

  Shayne said, “Lucy is a very candid and forthright girl. I’m sure she wouldn’t hold out on you, Will.”

  “Let’s think about that open bag in there and the stuff laid out on the bed,” said Rourke. “How would it work out if she fixed it that way while Lucy was getting here? To make it appear he was planning a trip?”

  “Why?” Gentry and Shayne asked the question simultaneously.

  Rourke shrugged his thin shoulders. “That’s for you sleuths to dope out.”

  “It just gives her a better apparent motive,” argued Shayne. “It’s more likely she’d do the opposite. Close up the bag and put the stuff away if she were going to tamper with evidence at all.” He moved toward the door, asking Rourke, “Haven’t you got a deadline to hit?”

  Rourke looked at his watch and followed swiftly. “I better file something. Give me a lift?”

  Shayne nodded and the two friends went down in the elevator together. They didn’t speak until they were outside and settled in Shayne’s car and it was moving away from the curb. Then the reporter said casually. “If you’re heading for the Beach, you can drop me off.”

  “Why should I be?”

  “Just a hunch that you’d be wanting a private talk with Lucy.”

  Shayne looked at him in amusement. “The same hunch that Will is riding? That Lucy is holding something back?”

  “If I were in your place, I’d find out what Lucy has to say before getting in too deep.”

  “What, exactly, do you mean by that crack, Tim?”

  “Mrs. Wallace must have had a hell of a strong reason for calling Lucy first, Mike, and then sitting there until she came, without calling the cops. That’s what sticks in Will’s craw. We all admit you’re pretty hot stuff in Miami, but don’t tell me you’ve fallen victim to your own publicity and have such a swelled head you think for a minute that people think of you before they think of the cops when they have a murder on their hands.”